Metadata usage in an online journal : an application profile

• Author(s): Baptista, Ana Alice ; Machado, Altamiro Barbosa
• Date: 2001
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/11593
• Origin: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Subject(s): Metadata; Semantic Web; Dublin Core; RDF; Metadados; Web Semântica
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

In a chaotic environment like the Internet, data are not enough anymore. The description of resources is fundamental in order to keep some structure and make Internet services more efficient and more effective Metadata is, basically, data about data. However, metadata per se is also insufficient: with different kinds of services and software using different metadata and metadata structures, the problem persists. As it happens in other areas, standardization is a keystone to the metadata usage and implementation. Dublin Core (DC) and RDF are two recommendations from two different initiatives: DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). In order to be widely used, the DCMI opted for broadly defining the DC semantics, while leaving the syntax issues open and undefined. This is the reason why RDF and DC match so well: RDF brings the syntax rules on which DC can be embedded. The RDF schema, on its turn, makes it possible to design and implement, in a consistent way, project specific metadata vocabularies not covered by DC or other standard metadata vocabularies. In this paper we will illustrate the use of DC, RDF and RDF Schema in the context of an online journal project: Informattica Online. An evaluation of this approach will also be presented.